The Great Debate

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The death of Anna Schwartz has been marked with reverential obituaries. Her contribution to economics was making sense of historical facts to offer a guide to what should be done today. Posterity will know her as the co-author, with Milton Friedman, of Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which revolutionized our understanding of the Great Depression. The pair concluded that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the slump was caused by the Federal Reserve not pumping enough money into the economy.

from Rolfe Winkler:

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Investors are celebrating an incipient "recovery," but the interventions responsible are sowing the seeds of a more violent contraction down the road. The problem, quite simply, is debt. We've accumulated record amounts, yet many economists tell us we need more.